The View From Here – My Heart Is Heavy

What a day.  What a week.  It seems this week went on especially long.  I’m tired.  Soul tired.

News headlines are heart breaking.  The world is in need of love, kindness, compassion, empathy, understanding. Headlines are showing us the opposite.

I think we are all feeling it.

The effects of this pandemic are taking it’s toll.  We’re tired.  We want life to go back to normal.  We want our freedoms back.  It’s easy to focus on what we are missing, and what we feel we are losing, giving up, sacrificing.  But we need to remember why we are doing it.  As Mitch Albom writes “it’s not about us”,   “we are all potential victims and potential killers”.

Something to think about.

I am no expert.  I’m just someone trying to get through it.  I want to go back to normal too.  But at what expense?  I’m not feeling ready to get back into the world.  Not yet.  I go for drives and see the “stay safe” signs and I wonder “how much longer?”.    I see the masked shoppers at the grocery store, and it reminds me of how much our world has changed.  I don’t want to be uncomfortable – because I know they are for everybody’s good – but it feels uncomfortable.   That THIS is the normal we are growing accustomed to.

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Video chats are the new normal.  Work meetings done on a phone screen.  Delayed conversation.  Overlapped conversation.  It’s not the same. And people are suffering from too much Zoom.  Zoom fatigue is a real thing.  We don’t really like it.  It’s awkward.   And there are scientific reasons why we are getting so annoyed by it.  It’s timing, it’s a lack of small talk, conversations aren’t balanced, there are no typical “cues” to follow like when you are speaking with someone face-to-face.

As much as I like seeing a co-worker or friend on my video screen, it’s not the same, and I’ve always said “I just don’t LIKE it.”  It feels uncomfortable to me.  I still prefer sending a message than having to stare at my own face on the screen awkwardly for 10 minutes.  It’s like constantly looking in the mirror and I hate that awkward feeling.

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A new report reveals the most Googled celebrity homes.   It looks like we want a peak inside the homes of  Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith’, Kylie Jenner (who’s $36.5 million dollar home has it’s own Instagram account)  Ellen DeGeneres,  Elon Musk, Ed Sheeran, and even Justin Bieber has us curious to see where he lays his hat in Ontario with his wife Hailey.

One thing I DID find to get way too excited about this week?  The cast of All My Children did a reunion of sorts. On Zoom.  And for those of us who have called All My Children their “story” or “soap” in the past, it’s pretty cool to see a few of your favourite characters on the screen again.  Remembering all those crazy characters and story lines.  Erica Cane. Palmer. Tad. Dixie.  Interesting to see just how many talented actors got their start on that show.  I couldn’t stop watching.  It was a week long event, part of Entertainment Weekly’s ongoing #UnitedAtHome series.  A new episode released every day this week, with TWO released today.  The AMC cast chose to support Feeding America, putting food on the tables of those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch the videos HERE.

Categorised in: Afternoons

This post was written by Carrie Buchanan